Saturday, October 25, 2014

Polls n Stuff

Taxi driver told me joke from Mao-era China:Mao announces that there's good news and bad news.What's the good news?There's only shit to eat.OMG. What's the bad news?There's not enough for everyone to eat.

FormosaNation passed this graphic from SCMP around twitter on the Taiwan elections. The KMT news organ turned up a poll on Taipei from the pro-KMT Taiwan Competitiveness Forum:

In another news story, the Taiwan Competitiveness Forum recently conducted two separate polls and released the results on October 21. In the first poll, the gap between Lien and Ko had shrunk from 12.7 in a previous survey to 4.4 percentage points. In the second poll, undeclared voters were asked about their party preference and voting behavior in both the 2010 Taipei City Mayoral Election and the 2012 Presidential Election. In this poll, the gap between the two candidates narrowed from 2.9 to 0.7 percentage points.

No other poll that I am aware of has the two candidates in Taipei so close. Most have 10-15% gaps, irrespective of the political allegiance of the paper. Taipei'ns are saying that the KMT strategy is to "dump Lien, protect Hu" -- give up on Sean Lien in Taipei and devote resources to the race in Taichung, a must-win for both sides. Dunno if that rumor is actually true, but it is reported in the papers. Hu's team basically strongly hinted there's no need for Ma to come down and help the Hu campaign.

Just remember, if Sean Lien wins, he'll have to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Lien Chan tried to put him forward as a 2016/2020 candidate even if he loses.

Among the six candidates vying in the election, 41% of the voters surveyed stated that they would vote for DPP candidate Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), while 13% expressed support for KMT candidate Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功), and 11% for Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰), an independent. According to the poll, most Keelung residents believe that Lin would win the election (54%), while fewer than 10% of the respondents thought that either Hsieh or Huang could win the election.

With the DPP's Lin out in front 41-13-11, even if former KMTer Huang drops out of the race and instructs everyone on his team to vote for the KMT candidate (that's happened before in other races), the DPP still wins handily. That's good news.
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Today is the 70th anniversary of the Battle Off Samar, perhaps the greatest moment in American naval history.

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